


without deeds

by Fiction_Over_Fact



Category: Naruto
Genre: Founding of Konoha, Gen, Pre-Slash, Uchiha Izuna Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 15:22:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19320853
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fiction_Over_Fact/pseuds/Fiction_Over_Fact
Summary: For ninja, family was decided by blood. Most, by that which ran in their veins.Others, by that which they have spilled.





	without deeds

**Author's Note:**

> The title comes from the quote: “Sacrifice is at the heart of repentance. Without deeds, your apology is worthless.” – Bryan Davis
> 
> * Canonically, I believe Hikaku should be closer to the Senju and Uchiha brothers in age? but here I’m thinking he’s like 12 to 14ish range to Tobirama’s 22/23ish. (If I ever manage to continue this the kid will be Kagami, who's like...8 years old tops?)
> 
> ** If you follow me on tumblr this should be a little familiar! I posted several parts of this fic as I was writing it a while back (less than 6 months ago probably? What is time, really), so yeah.

Tobirama allows himself an instant to think fondly of his office—the warm cup of tea he’d left steaming on his desk. The tall stack of finished paperwork set to the side, ready to move from his hands to others come morning. The collection of sealing scrolls Mito had given him a few days ago, fresh from the Uzumaki.

All of them good things.

All of them far, far more pleasant a prospect than where he stands now.

Cicadas buzz in the distant trees, and the summer settles hot over the street. The air is sticky with humidity, syrupy and thick on his skin. It’s been miserable to live with the last few days, but it’s favorable weather for a battle.

On his part, at least.

It’s the only thing favorable about this situation.

Tobirama glances over the semi-circle of Senju in front of him, feeling for the small pulse and flow of chakra signatures behind to pick up on the others without weakening his position.

Hikaku shifts, so close at his side that Tobirama feels the movement more than he sees it. His back-up, as strange as it is to think that. Stranger still to see his own kin watching him, tense and wary.

Distrustful, as though _they_ had the right to it.

Tobirama’s world had grown increasingly strange in the past year, though tonight’s events are altogether less...positive than the rest of the changes.

The five Senju surrounding them move in closer, slinking in like they're a hunting pack of wolves. This late after sunset there’s not enough light to see their faces until they close in even more. It doesn’t matter—Tobirama knows them all, their chakra along with their identities and personalities.

...based on tonight’s events, however, he’d have the revise his opinion on that last part.

Three of them are Konoha jounin.

Three of them men and women whose papers he’d signed himself, who he had watched be appointed and given headbands. He’d stood at Hashirama’s side during that ceremony, as his brother had damn near _glowed_ with pride at the way their kin would now carry a physical manifestation of his dream everywhere with them.

The memory rings hollow now, its heart carved out by the quiet, stuttering sobs Tobirama can barely hear pressed against his neck.

Their words had meant _nothing_ in the end.

All of them are family—in the sense of clan, in the sense of shared secrets, in the sense of once they had fought a war together, had sworn to die at each others’ sides and in each others’ defense.

That was where it ended.

Tobirama had stopped fighting the war a year ago, when Madara and Hashirama had called an armistice. He had attended treaty talks, clan visits and village planning discussions—all without a drop of blood spilled.

One of the men walks closer to them, making Hikaku’s chakra spike with worry. Tobirama tenses. The man’s— _Kenji’s_ —soft steps are loud in the tense silence surrounding them, but he can only just hear them through the blood roaring in his ears.

Tobirama knows him best of the men and women standing around him.

He knows Kenji’s bad knee and stiff shoulder, his tea preferences, how terrible he is at _Go—_ and Tobirama knows his _eyes_ , for he’s seen them almost everyday of his life, set in a different face.

Kenji is _family_ , more than any of the people at his sides, and he looks determined and hesitant at once. Tobirama knows him, and he knows Tobirama in turn.

But Tobirama is sick and tired of people looking at him and seeing nothing more than Butsuma and there is a little bloodstained _child_ holding tight around his neck _and Kenji—_

He knows nothing at all.

Kenji stops just over a body length from Tobirama—not within his immediate reach but dangerously close to it. His expression is complicated—resigned and hopeful, fearful and confident, like he knows how very thin the line he’s walking is. Woefully ignorant to the fact that he’s already lost balance on it, is already plummeting to the ground.

“Tobirama,” he says, with a voice that does not break and a back that does not bend. If Tobirama hadn’t learned what Kenji was capable of tonight, he might have called it brave.

As it is, Hikaku stiffens at his side.

As it is, tiny hands clench in the fur of his collar, another small, pained _sob_ burying itself in his skin.

As it is, brave is too kind a word.

“I have no desire to speak against your brother. I know that you two have always done your best for us.” Kenji watches him carefully as he says it, like Tobirama is some wild animal he expects to lash out and snap at him. “But this village, this alliance he forced us into—it disrespects our clan, our people, our _history_. Surely you can see that!”

“Our history isn’t more important than our survival, it lives only as long as we do.” Tobirama says, and Kenji’s eyes narrow, nostrils flaring. Somewhere, past his own temper and disgust, Tobirama finds the man’s unhappiness satisfying. “If we had kept fighting eventually we wouldn’t have had either a people or a clan.”

Regrettably, Kenji manages to unlatch his clenched jaw enough to retort.

“We would have died _Senju_ then, rather than cowards!” He spits, and the words have such firm, underlying passion that Tobirama can almost see how he ended up here tonight with a group, rather than a lone, dissident radical.

There was _something_ about a leader that believed in their goal to such a degree after all—something enchanting, something inspiring.

Something _disquieting_ when viewed from the outside, because Kenji’s determination carries an edge of desperation to it in Tobirama’s eyes, something flickering and deranged. The mean look he directs at the two Uchiha only cements that unease, because it holds a feeling deeper than simple hatred or resentment.

And it had no place being directed at a _child_.

Tobirama’s hand curls on the hilt of his sword. He edges slightly in front of Hikaku, making Kenji’s eyes snap back toward him.

They’re familiar, yes, but there’s none of Touka’s mischief or wryness within them. None of her heart.

And none of her brains either, it seems, because Kenji levels him with a hard look. “Will you join us?”

There’s _expectation_ on his face, genuine belief that Tobirama would set down a child and slit their throat; genuine belief that he would turn and cut down Hikaku—who is  _strong,_ yes, but quiet and clever and _young_.

Tobirama glares, his insides like ice.

“You’re traitors.”

It’s a judgment rather than an accusation, for there’s no doubt that it’s true.

Given his position within the village, it’s also a sentencing.

Kenji’s eyes widen, perhaps realizing the weight of his words, before he scowls. “We are _not_ traitors—we are loyal to our clan, to our people, to everyone that died in the war that your brother insists we forget about.” He leans forward, lips curling back to bare his teeth. “We’re not traitors for refusing to grovel at the Uchiha’s feet—your brother betrayed _us_.”

 _You_ betrayed us, he doesn’t say, but Tobirama hears it regardless.

The words don’t bother him the way they might normally.

Not from this man’s mouth.

“The Uchiha are our _allies_ , not our masters—or have you forgotten that _Hashirama_ is the Hokage?” Tobirama doesn’t snarl at him, but his expression still makes one of the younger men— _he knows him, knows that’s Kota, but_ _he doesn’t want to think of him as Kota right now, not in this moment, not with what he’s about to do_ —step back. His shoe catches on the ground, and the loud gravely scrape makes several of the others beside him jolt, startled.

Kenji, older but certainly not wiser, doesn’t notice, too honed in on Tobirama. “As soon as _Madara_ ,” he spits the Uchiha head’s name like a curse, hands shaking at his sides, “is done playing house with your brother, they’ll turn on us.”

And maybe, maybe a year ago or even six months ago, Tobirama would’ve believed that too, but—

Not anymore, not now that he’s seen Madara on the council, wary but passionate, Izuna always at his side with a glare that had gotten lighter and less with every passing day.

Tobirama is not a trusting man but he’s _sure_ of this village now, in the way he is of few things. And besides, it hadn’t been the _Uchiha_ that had first broken trust.

“You’re awfully quick to speak of betrayal, snake,” Tobirama says and Kenji’s lips thin even further. “The Uchiha haven’t harmed any Senju since we signed the treaty. _You_ , on the other hand—“

“We’re only doing what we must!” Kenji interrupts, taking a step closer, rage making him reckless.“Your brother is so enamored with the idea of this village that he never asked us if we _wanted_ it, never gave us a _choice,_ ” he says, and perhaps Tobirama could understand that complaint—he more than anyone knows how stubborn his brother can be, how uncompromising— _if_ it had been made by someone who wasn’t willing to slaughter a child in the streets to reignite a war.

“And _you_ ,” Tobirama returns the stare, letting his chakra press down heavy over the other Senju. Several of them falter at the feeling, at the reminder of who he was, what they were betraying. “You are so against peace that you’ve betrayed your people. You profess to hate traitors and yet you’ve betrayed our village.”

“The village?” Kenji laughs, a harsh, hacking sound. “ _We_ were never part of the village, and we aren’t traitors—not to our clan, not to our people. They’re misguided for now, but they are _ours_ and we’re doing what’s best for them.”

Tobirama’s teeth clench, so tight he can almost hear them crack under the pressure. “What’s best for them?”

“What’s best for them,” Kenji repeats, brimming with undeserved confidence. “Your brother has lead them astray, has deceived them. We seek only to correct the course, to free our clan.”

“By murdering children and starting a war,” Tobirama says, not bothering to stop his tone veering from dry to hostile.

Kenji’s jaw flexes and bulges, setting itself in a parody of the way Touka does. “ _Finishing_ a war that we should never have stopped fighting,” he protests. “Killing enemies we can never trust.”

And that was—

Wrong.

Peace was, as much as Tobirama himself had once doubted it, _good_ for them.

It was not defeat at the hands of old enemies, or laying dead on a burning battlefield; it was not swearing vengeance at the side of a grave or standing victorious at the steepest of prices.

The Uchiha and the Senju were _allies._ Individually, both of their clans were strong, but together they were more so, together they were _better_.

Whatever Kenji thought, whatever he and his group felt, however much they claimed to be loyal to the clan, to its principles—they were _traitors_.

To the Senju, and to the village.

Konoha was greater than one clan, and they were all greater for being part of it.

Tobirama was not Hashirama, not idealistic and hopeful the way his brother was. He’d had trouble with the village at first, trouble accepting Madara and Izuna as allies instead of enemies. But he knew loyalty and logic and had come to realize that the village represented both.

Pain did not beget pain beget pain—that was a cycle that went nowhere, that produced _nothing_ but corpses and graves. They’d fought the Uchiha for _years_ for nothing but a two-sided grudge no one knew the cause of and while pride and vengeance might be used to justify wars, but they didn’t win them.

It would be folly to drag them back into war for the sake of _satisfaction,_ as if there was such a thing as a war with a happy ending.

Peace was not about _forgetting_ their losses, growth was not disrespectful to the dead and to disbelieve both to the point of being willing to _murder a child_ to re-incite war…

That spoke of a man who had no place in either Konoha or the Senju.

Tobirama straightens his spine very slightly, shifting his weight.

He _moves_.

.

.

.

Tobirama decides to move out of the Senju district two days after—

Well...after.

He moves out on the third day.

No one tells him to, not with spat words or formal complaints or yelling. But they _look_ at him whenever they get the chance, their stares a heavy weight that presses down on his shoulders and settles in his lungs like lead. Some of them are disgraceful enough to look at him and fear, as if he’s naught more than a rabid animal they think will bite them _._

Like all of this was _his_ choice, like his hand wasn’t forced, like he would have done this if there had been any other _real_ option.

Still, it doesn’t matter what the Senju think.

They wouldn’t dare try to force him to leave, not now. Not with the knowledge they all now bear and Hashirama watching over them like a hawk. Not with the funerals still a week away and the blood yet to be cleaned from the street. They can’t make him go, but Tobirama goes anyway.

It feels right to leave.

Or, rather, it feels wrong to stay.

Leaving is easier, at least. He feels like doing the easy thing at this point. Feels like he might be _owed_ some easiness now, or at least some temporary relief from _right_ and _wrong_ and the middle ground between that has always made the most sense to him, but seems so foreign to others.

And staying would mean dealing with the looks he gets, full of words that they dare not say but he can hear all the same. Tobirama has never been the kind of man to care too much about public opinion, but the difference between being called _odd_ and _quiet_ and being called _traitor_ and _murderer_ is vast and cold and aching.

So he leaves and waits for Touka to come back—to condemn or commend him, because no matter that he’s sure he did the right thing he _orphaned_ his best friend—and he ignores the dark eyes that linger on him when he returns to the council.

He’s not sure what Izuna wants but it can wait.

It _will_ wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Hm. This is the second time I've written about Tobirama killing a family/clan member. Not a lot but weird that I've done it twice without setting out to.
> 
> Anyway, let me know what you thought!  
> I like some parts (and Dislike others) but overall I'm p good with how it turned out. Would've liked to do more for the ending but the reason I didn't post this months and months ago was _because_ I kept trying to write a better one and it kept Not Working so I'm wrapping it up here. (Preface: I _might_ continue this some day, I just really don't have a good direction for it rn so I'm marking it as complete for now and the foreseeable future).


End file.
